Jump The Curve Archives: 06/2008

15 Ways Nanotechnology is Making Life Better Today

Nanotechnology is expected to a $2.6 trillion market by 2015. At the heart of this big new sector is something very small—molecules. To understand how and why nanotechnology—which is defined as the manipulation of matter at the molecular level—matters, you can begin at home.

The Writing is Off-the-Wall

Behr and others are now using nanoparticles to produce anti-mildew paints and anti-graffiti paints. Another company is perfecting a nano-enhanced wall paint that blocks cellphone calls and, longer-term, researchers expect to create a nano-solar paint that can turn your wall and even your house into a giant solar cell.

Scratch-Free

BASF has developed a nanoceramic material that is three times more resistant to scratching. It is already being employed on kitchen tabletops and car exteriors. The company hopes to have self-healing materials on the market in the near future.

Wipe Away Your Worries

Pilkington’s “Activ” glass uses nanoparticles of titanium dioxide to create self-cleaning windows; while Eddie Bauer, Tommy Hilfiger and Brooks Brothers all sell clothes that contain tiny “nano-whiskers” and make pants, shirts and ties resistant to stains of every kind. Upholstery and carpet are up next.

Wrap Your Head Around This: The New Flat Will Be Round

Nanostructured polymer films are being used in next-generation OLED (organic light emitting diode) lights. The benefit is that the lights are ten times more energy-efficient than regular lightbulbs and can be wrapped around poles. Super-thin, flexible electronic television screens that can be curved to create a more immersive experience are on the drawing board.

A Germ-a-phobe’s Dream

Nano-silver particles and nano-silver coatings—which have amazing anti-bacterial properties—are being used to control germs, mold and fungus and are now in refrigerators, air conditioners, humidifiers and food-storage containers.

Another Reason to Despise Cloudy Days

A new solar fabric embedded with nanocrystals has helped turned tents into solar collectors. The real pay-off will come when the fabric in your clothing can help power your cellphone. The army is already investigating this possibility and commercial products are expected by 2010.

Get Some Skin in the Game

L’Oreal employs nanotechnology to deploy tiny capsules of Vitamin A to the optimum level under the skin. The effect? Fresher-looking skin and fewer wrinkles.

Less is More

Shemen Industries, a small Israel company, is deploying 30 nanometer capsules of phytosterol—a natural ingredient that helps lower cholesterol—in a variety of food products.

So Long Skunky Beer?

Miller Beer uses clay nanoparticles in its plastic beer bottles. The minute particles make it difficult for carbon dioxide molecules to escape and help keep the beverage fresher longer.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Starkey, Inc., an Eden Prairie-based company, uses a nanotechnology switch in its Destiny nFusion hearing aid to deliver high quality of sound to the user.

No Blood Money

Apollo Diamond uses a process called chemical vapor deposition to grow two-carat diamonds virtually overnight. Not only are Apollo’s diamonds are molecular identical to natural diamonds, they less expensive; don’t take billions of years to form; are more environmentally friendly; and no one is exploited in the mining or manufacturing process.

Nano, Nano

The iPod Nano contains flash memory chips made with components measuring less than 100 nanometers. Within a decade, continued advances in nanotechnology are expected to help store all of a family’s digital content—photos, songs, videos, TV programs—on a device the smaller than an iPod Nano.

Get in the Game

NanoDynamic has created a nanotech golf ball that reduces the distance a ball hooks or slices; Easton is making a super-strong, superlight hockey stick with carbon nanotubes; and there are even now nano-enhanced fishing rods, fishing lures, ski waxes and bowling balls on the market.

Ice-fishing Just Won’t be the Same

Aspen Aerogel’s “Toasty Feet” insoles employ an innovative nanomaterial designed to keep a shoe a stable 72 degrees even if the wearer is standing on a block of ice. The company has also developed a new building insulation material that has eight times the thermal insulating properties of the best material currently on the market.

You’ll Be On Your Way in No Time

A new nano-titanate material is being used in car batteries. It reportedly allows cars to run for 300 miles on a single charge.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

When Less is More

It is easy to believe that having more choices will lead to a greater level of happiness. However, as this new study suggests, people may be more satisfied when selecting from a smaller set of options.

There are a couple of reasons for this somewhat counter-intuitive finding, but the most poignant seems to be that when people select from a wider array of choices they often experience a greater sense of regret (after their selection) because they aren’t as confident that they made the optimal choice.

Trying to convince people that having fewer choices is a good idea will be difficult endeavor, but smart companies may be able to enhance their customers feeling of satisfaction by presenting information in new and innovative methods. For instance, think of on-line dating companies. Instead of presenting customers with an ever widening array of potential partners, they might instead employ sophisticated algorithms to narrow the list of prospective mates from which a person selects their choice.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Unlearning Death

In 1899, just a few years before the Wright brothers achieved their historic accomplishment, Lord Kelvin—then one of the world’s brightest men and most accomplished scientists—declared heavier than air machines to be “impossible.”

He was wrong. To add insult to injury, Lord Kelvin was proved wrong by a pair of bicycle repairmen from Dayton, Ohio.

A few years ago, a relatively unknown computer scientist, Aubrey de Grey, declared that aging should not be viewed as something which will necessarily ultimately result in death. Rather, he theorized that aging is a disease and should be treated as such.

The outcry from the scientific community was similar to Lord Kelvin’s reaction to human flight. One group of scientists even declared that de Grey’s idea was “so far from plausible that it commands no respect at all within the informed scientific community.”

Well, according to this article in Wired, the idea is now beginning to gain some acceptance within scientific circles.

To be sure, society is still a long way from de Grey’s goal of ending again but, as I have written before, I’d encourage people to not dismiss the idea entirely. For if he is right, it will require society to unlearn a great many ideas which it now holds as dear.

In fact, the scale of unlearning our current paradigm of “death as an inevitability” could make other past historic paradigm shifts—such as the idea that the earth is not at the center of the universe (an idea for which Aristarchus was run out of Alexandria and Galileo was forced to recant under edict of the Catholic Church) or Darwin’s theory of evolution—look like child’s play.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Mars Jumps the Curve

BBC is reporting that Mars, the chocolate company, is planning to decode the genetic structure of the cacao tree. This is an excellent idea.

Recently, almost 60 percent of the Brazilian cocoa crop was wiped out due to a disease called witches. When the company sequences the genome of the cacao tree—which is expected to take five years—researchers may be able to understand the trees DNA and help make crop production not only more resistant to diseases such as witches, but also to pests and even water shortages which could come from a warming climate.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

An Opposing View: Learn from Robots

Earlier today, I wrote this piece: Learning From Robots. For an opposing view of why robots might never make good teachers, I’d invite you to review this piece from Gizmodo.

My only response is that history is littered with examples of scientists who said certain things were “impossible.”

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Learning From Robots

When contemplating the future, people need to keep a very open mind about what might be possible. Consider this article which describes how researchers at UC San Diego are developing facial recognition technology that can recognize if a person is having trouble understanding an educational lesson—say in mathematics or biology.

As the technology continues to improve, one possible implication is that smart devices and robots will become better and more effective teachers because they will be able to pace lesson plans to an individual student’s ability to comprehend the information which is being presented.

Longer term, it is possible that robots and other smart devices will become more effective teachers than even human teachers because the machines will understand each student’s learning idiosyncrasies and then present material in a manner which is optimized for that individual student’s learning style.

Now, I understand how discomforting the idea that a robot might be a better teacher than your old favorite third grade teacher, Mrs. Hubbard, ever was; but, as that wise American philosopher Yoggi Berra once said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

For a more contemporary look at how technology is transforming education, I’d invite you to read this article which explains how Nintendo DS is helping Japanese students learn the English language.

Related Posts

The Future of Education is Now
The Future of Education: Is It About to Be Rekindled?
The Future of College
The Future of Reading
The Exponential Educator

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Wireless Medical Technology May Not Be for Everyone

I write frequently on the future of health care and it is easy to envision a future in which wireless medical technology becomes pervasive. As this small article which was buried in the back pages of today’s Wall Street Journal warns, there might be some unintended consequences of these new wireless technologies. I point this out because lawyers and federal regulators often have a way of laying waste to the best laid forecasts of how certain technologies might take root in society.

Interested in other health care-related posts? Check out these recent articles:

The Future of Health Care: Preventing Disease
Health Care Providers Need a Second Life
The Future of Health Care: Part 3 (Robotics)
The Robot Will See You Now
Hospitals Robotic Future: Part 2
Hospitals Robotic Future: Part 1
Hospitals Get a Lift

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Jump the Curve to a New Way of Understanding the World

Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, has written an excellent article entitled ”The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes Scientific Method Obsolete” in which he convincingly argues that massive amounts of data, in combination with sophisticated algorithms and super powerful computers, offers mankind a whole new way of understanding the world.

Anderson believes that our technological tools have now progressed to the point where the “old way” of doing science—hypothesize, model and test—is becoming obsolete. In its place, a new paradigm is now emerging whereby scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs simply allow statistical algorithms to find patterns where science cannot.

If Anderson is correct—and I believe he very well could be—this will take science in a whole new direction. In short, instead of modeling and waiting to find out if hypotheses are valid the scientific community can instead rely on intelligent algorithms to do the heavy lifting.

Before this vision can be achieved, however, it will require a great many brilliant scientists to unlearn the idea that their “model-based” method of trying to make sense of today’s increasingly complex world is the only way to search for new meaning.

The implication for a field such as biology which, as Anderson points out is actually becoming more difficult to model as learn more about it (due to our limited understanding of how genetics, microbes, personal behavior, the environment, and a host of other factors work in partnership to determine a person’s health), could be profound. More specifically, we will be able to analyze data without allowing hypotheses (which are, perhaps, wrong) to cloud our view of what the data is really showing us.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Unlearn or Die Even More Unnecessarily

A few weeks back I had a posting entitled ”Change or Die ... Unnecessarily” in which I provided a few examples of how our inability to unlearn could, quite literally, cost some people their lives. Well, the other day, one of my favorite thinkers, Josh Wolfe, sent me a copy his weekly newsletter, The Forbes/Wolfe Weekly Insider. In it, he unveiled some startling research from a forthcoming book: apparently, six times as many people died in their cars from the 9/11 terrorist attack as did the number of people who died in planes.

The authors don’t state their research in quite this bold of a fashion, nevertheless this is one implication of their finding. On the face of it, the idea sounds absurd—everyone knows only a few hundred of the victims of 9/11 were in the airplanes that crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the rural field in Pennsylvania.

Essentially, it is the author’s contention that because millions of people refused to fly after the 9/11 attacks—and instead chose to drive (which is demonstrably more risky in statistical terms than flying)—an estimated 1,595 additional people have died from the 9/11 attack than is generally recognized.

If these people could have unlearned that their fear of flying was irrational because it caused them to engage in an even riskier activity, it is likely they would be alive today.

On a somewhat related note, I recently received a copy of a powerpoint presentation from one of the world’s leading epidemiologists, Michael Osterholm. In it, he coherently argues that the United States is woefully unprepared to deal with the very real possibility of a major pandemic.

Interestingly, in his slides, Osterholm makes the point that it possible that more people will die from non-influenza-related deaths than from the flu itself.

How so, you ask? Well, much of the pharmaceutical industry utilizes “just-in-time” inventory procedures. In the event of a major pandemic, shipping, trucking and distribution centers will be hampered and maybe even shut down entirely. As a result, hospitals—which already have a dangerously low supply of many critical life-savings drugs—will run out of important drugs in a matter of days.

The effect: people will die unnecessarily. That is, unless, we can unlearn the idea that “just-in-time” inventory for certain critical supplies is not necessarily a good idea.

Related Posts

Air Force Needs to Change

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Jump the Curve to a New Standard for Fuel Efficiency

According to a new study by two professors at Duke University, consumers would make more informed buying decisions about automobiles if fuel efficiency information were conveyed in “gallons per mile” as opposed to “miles per gallon.”

The current “miles per gallon” standard can play tricks on people’s intuitions. The reality is that improving fuel efficiency from 10 to 20 mpg is actually a more significant savings than improving from 25 to 50 mpg—for the same distance of driving. For example, using the first example of switching from a 10 mpg vehicle to a 20 mpg vehicle, if someone were driving 100 miles the switch would result in a savings of 5 gallons. If, however, a family made the other switch (from a 25 to 50 mpg vehicle) they would only realize a savings of two gallons.

The distinction is important because while it is obvious that a 50 mpg car would be the most fuel efficient, the reality is that many people still rely (or prefer) larger SUV’s and minivans. Therefore, when in the market for a vehicle which they will actually use, they should concern themselves more with the “gallons per mile” than “miles per gallon.” (For a better understanding of this argument, I’d recommend this article.)

It will be interesting to see if buyers, the automobile industry, their advertising companies, and even environmentalists can unlearn their old focus on “miles per gallon.”

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Jump the Curve to a New Type of Advertising

The price of 3-D cameras is falling fast. One of the implications of this is that soon advertisers and retailers will be able to produce new and more interactive methods of communication. I have written about this idea before, but I’d really encourage businesses that rely on advertising and marketing to rethink how this new technology could allow them to reach new customers in innovative ways, as well as reach out to existing customers in richer and more meaningful methods.

For example, if you own a popular destination in a touristy city why settle for offering a customer a brochure in a hotel lobby when you can engage them in a more emotional way by having them “experience” your destination. Restaurants could offer patrons a view of the entire restaurant and even allow them to select their exact table, and clothing retailers might offer an interactive mirror and allow potential customers to “virtually” try on a new pair of jeans. The list of possibilities is almost endless.

The technology, of course, is not limited to advertising. It can also give teachers a new way to engage students. However, before the technology and its full possibilities can be truly embraced, a number of people will need to unlearn the idea that billboards and brochures are the only way to advertise or that students can only be instructed from a textbook.

Related Posts

The Future of Advertising

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

The Future of Reading

Reading. Most of us do it every day and it is so ingrained from such an early age that it is difficult to imagine that there is another way of doing it. Yet, there is.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to sit down with Adam Gordon, the vice president of marketing for Live Ink, to discuss his company’s revolutionary new technology—Live Ink.

Before explaining the technology, however, have you ever wondered why we read the way we do? That is, why do we read words in block text—such as you are doing at this very moment.

I am no historical scholar but I suspect the answer goes back thousands of years and it is partly dependent on writers need to make efficient use of limited resources. First, stone tablets; then papyrus and, ultimately, pulp-based paper.

In much the same way that the QWERTY keyboard has become the de facto way we write on computers —even though it has been demonstrated that there are more efficient and faster methods of typing -- the same can be said for how we read. But instead of dealing with one hundred years of established tradition—as in the case of QWERTY keyboard—printed text in block form has been around since Johannes Gutenberg printed off his first bible.

In the near future, however, the resistance to this long-held paradigm will begin to fade. I am not suggesting that printed block text will fade away overnight, but a convergence of technologies has now created an environment in which a different method of how we access the written word has been created.

Before I go any further let me first invite you to view a visual demonstration of Live Ink’s technology here. In its simpliest form, Live Ink displays text in shorter lines; breaks the text into grammatically meaningful segments; and then indents the text to cue the brain to key phrases within a given sentence.

What immediately appealed to me about Live Ink’s technology was the notion that written text as it was historically formatted was not optimized for the human mind. In other words, while it is true that we can read long line-by-line text that does not imply that it is necessarily the best way for the human eye to operate or for the human mind to comprehend written information.

Until recently there wasn’t much that could be done about this shortcoming. To make books compact and conserve limited resources, it helped to cram as many words onto a page as possible. Today, however, as ever more people access digital information on the Web; from their cellphones; Kindle-like electronic books; and, soon, other flexible electronic media, it will make sense to display information not as “we have always done it,” but rather in a manner that is easiest, fastest and allows us to retain the most information.

Company executives don’t make any claims that their technology improves the rate at which people read; they have, however, documented how their technology dramatically increases reading comprehension rates and eases strain on the eye.

I cannot often say with a strong conviction that I have seen the future; but, in the case of Live Ink, I truly believe I have seen the future of reading. Within months, I fully expect my website—and thousands of others—to begin placing a widget on their site that will allow readers to access written information in a new, faster and more efficient manner.

(For the record, I am in no way involved with or have a financial interest in Live Ink.)

Related Posts by Jack Uldrich:

Paper Industry Needs to Turn a New Page

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Meet Your Future, Shape-Shifting Robotic Butler

One of the fun things about being a futurist is trying to understand how the convergence of various emerging technologies might lead to the creation of radically different products in the future.

For instance, consider these two articles which, on their face, appear to have little in common with one another. The first article announced that four robotics companies in Japan are uniting in an effort to create a mainstream market for robots. (For fans of accelerating technological change, please note how they hope to increase by ten-fold the number of domestic robots employed in Japan by 2013). The second article discusses how researchers at the The Franhofer Institute in Europe are making impressive progress in having computers anticipate human needs.

Now, one of the largest markets for robots in Japan is to have them serve the country’s growing—and rapidly aging—population of senior citizens. If the new alliance of Japanese robotic companies—which is known as the Federation for the Market Creation of Next-Generation Robots—gains access to some of the “human anticipation software” that the Franhofer Institute is developing, it is reasonable to believe that soon robots will not only be able to perform basic functions they will also be able to anticipate many of their owners needs.

If one further considers that iRobot is now developing a shape-shifting robot and that Hasbro Electronics is building a robot capable of serenading you, it is even possible that your robotic butler of the future will be able to sing you a catchy tune while cleaning those hard-to-reach places in your kitchen.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

“Unusually Rapid Improvements” Will Become Usual

It was reported last week that US life expectancy topped 78 years as a variety of diseases—including heart disease, diabetes and flu—decreased this past year.

More interestingly, life expectancy—which has been increasing about two or three months from year to year—jumped an impressive four months this year. This caused one demographer to note that the increase was “an unusually rapid improvement.”

It was “an usually rapid improvement,” but I’d like to argue that such rapid improvements will become “usual” for the foreseeable future. If one tracks the amazing rate of progress in biotechnology, genomics, stem cell research and nanotechnology; it is hard—barring a devastating calamity that kills thousands or millions of people—to envision how life expectancy will do anything but continue to increase at an accelerating rate.

At a minimum, given the existing pressure on such social programs as Social Security and Medicare, it seems only prudent that we should at least begin preparing for life expectancies in the neighborhood of 100 within the next few decades. 

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Sound Off on New Metamaterials

I live in Southwest Minneapolis. It is a beautiful part of the city and is near an abundance of lakes and parks. As anyone who lives here knows, however, the one downside is the neighborhood’s proximity to the Twin Cities International airport. In the summer, if you are inside your home conversing on the phone with a friend, it is not uncommon to have to halt your conversation every few minutes while a 727 or 747 airplanes lumbers overhead.

Alas, there may be hope on the way for me and my neighbors—as well as thousands of other people who suffer from noise pollution. According to this article in today’s Technology Review, researchers at MIT have developed a new metamaterial that can distribute sound around various materials. Among other things, this means that the sound from those planes could some day soon simply be transferred around my house.

It is an exciting technology and it is one that architects, builders and designers should keep in mind if they want to “jump the curve” and provide consumers with products that improve the quality of their life.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Safety Equipment: Vast Room for Improvement

The threat of a major terrorist attack is generally downplayed in most people’s minds. This is short-sighted. Last year it was suggested that the probablity of a major terrorist attack—in the form of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack—occuring within the next 10 years was 50 percent. Fifty percent!

As a result of this inattention, this country is investing few resources in developing next-generation detection equipment that could help prevent such attacks. And we are investing even less in developing and manufacturing equipment and technology that could assist society in the event of an attack.

Three specific reports from this past week highlight just how much more we could be doing. On Friday, it was reported that researchers at MIT are developing bacterial chemical sensors—sensors that could theoretically change color in the presense of dangerous materials. Given the vulnerability of both our ports and our food supply infrastructure, a modest investment in advancing this technology (and other related technologies) seems warranted.

This past week also witnessed reports on the development of “nano-paper”—a super-paper that is stronger than cast iron—and a breakthrough in carbon-nanotube technology which could provide the foundation for a hyper-efficient filter. Both technologies have a host of applications in emergency management situations, although they are not simply limited to assisting after a major terrorist attack.

Consider the situation in Iowa where flooding is threatening millions of acres and putting thousands of people at risk. The development of barriers constructed from nano-papers could make levies stronger and longer-lasting; and the creation of carbon-nanotube filters could ease concerns over contaminated drinking water.

Before such technologies can be deployed in such a systemic way, however, it is first essential that these promising technologies don’t languish in the laboratory. It would be a shame to realize—after a terrorist attack—that protective detection and safety equipment did exist but we did little to rush it to market.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

BMW Jumps the Curve

The German automaker BMW, in introducing its new “Light Visionary Model” prototype—which it dubs GINA (Geometry and Functions “N” Adaptions")—writes this: ”The key to affecting the development of tomorrow’s mobility lies in our readiness to challenge what is established and in the ability to present new options.” In short, BMW is jumping the curve and embracing the future.

Watch the short video below and notice how doors and hoods no longer open (they fold and zip open) and how the lights do open (much like human eyes), I think you’ll agree that the benefits of jumping the curve could give BMW a very distinct competitive advantage as it boldly moves into the future.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

The CIA Jumps the Curve

Computer World has an interesting article discussing the CIA’s use of Intellipedia—a Wikipedia-like project for its analysts. As a former naval intelligence officer, I think this is a fantastic idea but—perhaps not unsurprisingly—the idea has been met with some resistance from within the intelligence community. According to the article, in fact, the founders of the initiative were originally called “traitors.”

The idea of sharing knowledge and working among different agencies is undoubtedly foreign to many in the intelligence community; but it is unrealistic to expect even the most talented analyst to stay abreast of all the information, data and knowledge that is necessary to track, monitor and anticipate our enemies actions. It is only prudent that we adopt new tools such as Intellipedia—which may help alleviate some of the burden.

However, before the tool can reach its full potential, it is essential that those intelligence officers who are not contributing to the wiki “unlearn” the idea that intelligence can only be analyzed one way or by a small group of people.

Interestingly, some of the most eager users of Intelliedia are older intelligence officers who view it as a way of sharing their vast knowledge with their younger associates before they retire.

(For those interested in better understanding the power of open-source initiatives, I’d refer you to the now classic story of how Gold Corp tapped the power of the Internet to find $3 billion in gold or this intriguing story, which I cite in my book, about how a citizen sleuth used Google Earth to uncover a Chinese military secret.)

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Get Prepared to Unlearn at Warp Speed

IBM recently announced that it has developed a new supercomputer capable of performing 1,000 trillion calculations per second. It is a little hard to wrap your brain around such mind-boggling numbers, but last year I wrote an article discussing an IBM supercomputer that was capable of performing 70 trillion calculations per second. In the piece, I noted that if you had to perform a similar number of calculations (and assuming you could work 365/7/24) it would take you roughly 60 million years to perform what that supercomputer could do in one second.

Well, with this latest advance, it would now take you—theoretically speaking—about 800 million years. Of course, such a comparison is slightly ridiculous. What is not ridiculous, however, is what these supercomputers are doing and learning. With their immense electronic brains they are now designing new materials and products; creating new drugs; and helping us better understand everything from the human body and brain to how mankind is impacting the environment.

One implication of these new findings is that all of us will need to unlearn at a faster rate.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Filtering Away Cancer

I have said on numerous occasions that I believe the semiconductor industry offers great hope in addressing the issue of cancer. To this end, I’d encourage you to read this article which discusses how researchers have now developed a new silicon computer chips that can filter out cancer cells according to their unique size.

Now, I don’t expect to such chips will be floating in your body anytime soon, but if you “jump the curve” it seems reasonable that by 2020 the technology (or a similarly related technology) will be making great strides in the battle against cancer.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Agriculture Industry Gets Tagged for RFID Implementation

The government of New Zealand is reportedly planning on tagging all cattle with RFID chips by 2011. The development is a harbinger of things to come for the U.S. agricultural industry. In addition to letting farmers and ranchers track individual cattle by the age, sex and breed, the chips will also allow agri-business to monitor the animal all the way from the farm to your local grocery store.

This tracability will allow consumers to know everything from what anti-biotics the animal was injected with, to whether it was fed with organic feed and raised in a “free-range” environment. The tracibility will also ensure that businesses and governments are quickly able to recall meat in the event of a disease outbreak.

When one further considers how “smart” smart-phones will get in the future, I can easily envision consumers soon using their phones to scan products in the store for information—including genetic information -- before they actually make a purchase.

Related Articles by Jack Uldrich

Agriculture’s High-Tech Future
The Future of Agriculture
The Future of Food is Tiny
Agriculture Sector Looks Good in Genes

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

I Just Want to Bang on My Table All Day

Although Jump the Curve deals primarily with new and emerging technologies sometimes I just like to highlight ideas which represent certain aspects of the book. In this case, I’d invite you to check out this very short video of a man who is building tables which double as instruments. It is a great example of what I call the “power of play”—or thinking like a child.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Embrace a New Dimension

It has been said that the reason doctors and surgeons have not embraced simulated training to the same degree as airline pilots is because they don’t “go down” with their patients. The implicit message is that pilots have an incentive to utilize the very best training tools.

This distinction is important because as 3-D display and virtual reality technology continues to improve it will soon reach a point where it is just as good if not better than current training techniques. The U.S. military has already embraced virtual reality training to prepare soldiers before they go into actual battle because it has been demonstrated to save lives. The same will soon be true in the health care industry, but first doctors and surgeons (and the medical institutions that train them) may need to unlearn existing training methods which they have relied on for the past many decades.

This lesson in unlearning, however, is not limited to the health care sector. As this article suggests, innovative leaders in the automotive industry are already embracing the technology. There is no reason educators and professionals in a host of other industries can’t do the same.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Air Force Needs to Change

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting review of the new book, Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel. It is a history of the world’s first machine gun. Interestingly, although the gun was patented during the Civil War and Mr. Gatling urged the Union Army to adopt it—arguing that it would "save lives, wounds and sickness, by lessening the numbers subjected to the perils of war"—nobody listened. It wasn’t until the Spanish-American War in 1898—almost 40 years after its invention—that it was first deployed.

This little lesson in history is directly applicable to a new, modern weapon—unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates complained that the Air Force was not adopting the use of UAVs—also known as drones—fast enough. He further argued that the Air Force generals who weren’t adopting the technology were unnecessarily putting airman’s lives at risk.

Gates is right. UAV’s can now fly for hours over enemy territory and, if necessary, fire and drop an assortment of weapons. Perhaps it is time that a great many Air Force generals who learned the importance of using fighters and bombers to engage and suppress the enemy now “unlearn” that behavior. The sooner they do, the fewer American lives the military will unnecessarily put at risk.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments

Paper Industry Needs to Turn the Page to a New Future

Yesterday, in this video, fellow business forecaster and futurist, Patrick Dixon, discussed why he thinks the future of the paper industry is bright for the foreseeable future. I’m not so optimistic and to understand why I’d invite you to watch the short video below which documents the impressive work researchers at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab are doing in creating ”organic user interfaces.”

To be sure the technology is still not very sophisticated and, in general, people will be reluctant to change, but if one considers the success of Amazon’s Kindle and then extrapolates out (or “jumps the curve") how organic user interface technology will only continue to improve in the near future, it is entirely possible that growing legions of people will soon turn away from reading the content of newspapers, magazines and books on paper and instead choose to use flexible electronic paper. This will be especially true if, as the video suggests, flexible electronic paper feels like paper and the user can even turn the page in a fashion similar to paper. 

Bottom-line: It is time for the paper industry to turn a new page and seriously consider how this technology will transform its business.

Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.

                           

Email This Article To A Friend   View/Add Comments